Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Rating: Very goodMeal: Lunch for 2Price: 2100 yenPayment: Credit cards acceptedDishes: Pizza and pasta with 2 soup/salad setsEnglish Menu: Probably (the one we saw had no English)Smoking: Allowed on the porch

Finally something new opened in the old Bravo Yokosuka spot: a pizzeria! The downstairs is almost entirely kitchen with bar seating for about 4, while upstairs they have seating both in and outside (for the smokers). I assume when the weather is nicer they will also seat people on the available pavement. It is entirely staffed by Japanese, and they seem to know what they are about.

I tried ordering pizza for take away twice before, but they were too busy. So today for lunch I met my wife there and we gave the lunch menu a try. It is very nicely priced, with many pizzas available for just 500 yen. The pasta dishes are a bit more, but there are 4 options available. There are 3 levels of sets available from just a drink up to drink, soup, salad and dessert. We opted for drink, soup and salad.

The pizza was pretty good for the price (and we added the cherry tomatoes), though I did ask for some salt to help the crust. You'd be hard pressed to get a pizza, salad and a drink for about 800 yen anywhere in town. The pasta was thicker than spaghetti and had that "fresh" pasta feel, not overdone. It was pretty decent. We both ordered coffees that turned out very nice, and the salad was a step above the usual shredded cabbage fare. The soup was delicious cream corn and perfect for a cold day.

Overall we were very pleased and looking forward to return for dinner to try the rather extensive full menu. Nice to have a new place to eat so close by!

Kappa Sushi is our favorite "100 yen" sushi joint. There are lots of them around and usually they aren't very good. Kappa is a bit better than most, which is why I'm giving it a Very Good rating in comparison with other "100 yen" places. We used to eat at Kappa a lot more when we lived in Kurihama and it was a convenient stop (with a parking lot) on the way home. Also, my son likes "sushi" in that he likes tamago, inari and tobiko, so he is very easy to satisfy with 100 yen sushi. But it's Christmas Eve and he's home for the holidays and hasn't had any sushi in quite a while, so we decided to make a trip of it.

Kappa, like SushiRo, has a kiosk at the front where you enter how many people and whether you want a table or bar seating. Then you get a ticket and wait for your number to be called. It was not busy today so we went right in. The two main reasons I like Kappa better than the rest are that the quality of the food (all of it) is just a bit higher and I love that their "special delivery" comes on a train track above the main sushi track directly to your table. No chances of someone stealing your special order or kids getting their grubby hands/germs all over it in transit. We availed ourselves liberally of the English digital menu to special order all sorts of things.Since it is Chrizmas, we also allowed ourselves some dessert, something we rarely do. I got a Japanese style custard which was quite tasty. Oh, also we had some clam miso soup and a chawanmushi (egg custard with seafood). Nice place, and while I always feel full afterwards I rarely feel nasty, which is more than I can say for the other joints.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Guu is down some stairs and the sign looks a bit fancy, but inside it's very humble. Looks like its been there a while and an older lady and someone who might be her son were running it. There was also a kid hanging around too, so probably a family affair. I was the only customer and they were a bit concerned that I might not speak Japanese but I indicated I could get by.

The menu was a bit difficult to parse, but I ended up pointing at some things that looked good and I was pleased with the result. The pork omelet thing was smothered with mayonnaise, but that didn't bother me. The soup dish was amazing, full of bits of (probably) offal, carrots, gobo root, konyaku and the broth was a like the concentrated deliciousness at the bottom of a sukiyaki pot near the end of the meal. I also got a small bowl of rice to make it a meal.

I needed to eat quick and simple, and it hit the spot. I was tempted to give them a Very Good, but it wasn't quite in that territory. Definitely satisfactory though.

Ah yakiniku, not my favorite cuisine, but if you are going to eat it, lunchtime is best. Most places have lunch specials that aren't insanely expensive and come with a salad, rice and soup. Yakiniku Sakai is located a bit down the road from Yokosuka proper, next to a pachinko parlor. It's got a big garage attached and a lovely view of Tokyo Bay and Sarushima. Looks like it's been around since the '80s given the general upkeep, but it's sufficient to the task. Also, they use actual charcoal, so that's a plus.

I cooked my meat, at it, and paid. It was ok. The oxtail soup was disappointing in that it had no meat chunks in it.

Friday, December 16, 2016

Rating: Not greatMeal: Lunch for 2Price: 3400 yenPayment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: All you can eat deep fried food on sticksEnglish Menu: No (not needed)Smoking: No (but you will smell like a fry cook afterwards)

I swear I wrote a review on this place but apparently it disappeared. Kushiya Monogatari is "kushiage" or "things on sticks that you deep fry at your table". This is a thing in Japan, and probably only in Japan, which makes it worth checking out at least once. Then you can decide if this is something you like. My wife and I have done it twice now, and we're pretty sure it isn't our thing.

Chicken precooked

This place in More's City is convenient, clean, and relatively cheap at lunch. It's 70 minutes, all you can eat. Be sure to put your coats under the seats as they will reek otherwise. You go get your sticks, bring them to your table, batter them up, roll in panko, and put it in the deep frier in the middle of the table. There is an English set of instructions with recommended times. There are several multi-timers available in various app stores that make this much easier to keep track of.

Chicken post cooked

Aside from stuff on sticks to deep fry, there are lots of other foods available, my favorite being rice and pickles. But you can also eat curry (for the kids I'm sure) and salad. There's a dessert section too with a chocolate (white this time, yuck) fountain do dip marshmallows in.

I was suffering the rest of the day from my stomach's reaction to the grease...getting old sucks! And the pace is pretty frantic as you have to constantly keep getting more sticks, keep track of all the times for different things, and refilling your batter/panko as you make a mess trying to properly coat everything. Like I said, worth doing once (or twice) but it's not our thing.

Tori no Su is an izakaya located above my favorite liquor store (Hitomoto). For some reason I had never tried it so I gave it a shot last night. It's a bit louder and more boisterous than most izakayas I've been to, but it wasn't too bad. They had an english menu that made ordering easy.

Otoushi and sake

The otoushi (mandatory appetizer) was really tasty with some very salty fish and fish roe combined with blander but tasty re-hydrated tofu. I had a couple of pork belly on sticks as well as the yakitori combo. The pork belly was really good and the yakitori mix was more of a hit or miss affair. Mainly because I'm not super fond of cartilage, but the other stuff was quite good. Loved the liver. I also ordered a rice with chicken dish that complemented the other food nicely. I was definitely full when finished. Oh, and of course some hot sake to chase away the chill of winter.

A friend of mine at work wanted to show me a new tonkatsu restaurant he had found. It's a bit of a drive from work, but we made the trip in an hour barely.

Katsuya is a chain of tonkatsu restaurants that my wife and I had eaten at once long ago closer to Yokota. We remarked that it was a good thing this chain didn't exist closer to home as it's very convenient, usually has parking lots, and is quite cheap. We noticed this branch open up at some point, but since we don't live down near Kurihama anymore we haven't had a chance to eat there again.

It was quite decent, and I would probably give it a Very Good were there not such great competition. I would say it goes Hirokatsu, then Wako, then Katsuya, then 7-11. However their tonjiru (pork soup) was absolutely delicious and I was glad I got an extra large bowl of the stuff. This place is always a welcome sight when I'm in my car around lunch time.

Monday, December 5, 2016

We were downtown on Sunday morning for the first service of a new church plant we are a part of. We won't be meeting every week for a while yet. After the service several of us went to find a place to eat lunch together and this spot was selected, a Chinese restaurant whose name I'm not sure I caught correctly.

The fare was pretty typical of Japanese Chinese restaurants, and the prices were nice and low. We weren't there for the food, so I didn't pay too much attention, but it was pretty unimpressive. Nonetheless we had a good time there talking with people and I don't harbor any resentment towards the restaurant. I was rather busy so I didn't get around to taking a picture of the dishes (no need to be that obnoxious), but you can see the types of dishes on the menu above.

Still looking for every last restaurant near me to review, so I swung by this shabu-shabu place I've seen for a long time, but since I'm not terribly fond of shabu-shabu I had avoided it thus far. Hokkai Shabu Shabu specializes apparently in Hokkaido versions of shabu-shabu, which in this case seems to mean lamb. I ordered the cheapest thing I could find on the menu and got a free drink with it (maybe it was all you can drink but I think you had to go up one level for that). I got a Sapporo beer of course!

The big nabe pot had a ton of broth and veggies in it, and while that started to boil they brought me a platter full of lamb. I think if you had a bowl of rice each, you could easily share this between two people. But I didn't ask for any rice and just ate my meat and veggies. The tough part was towards the end when I wanted to drink up ever last bit of broth. I ended up turning the gas off and using the napkins to pour the broth into the small bowl and slurp it down. It really hit the spot on a cold night.

So oddly enough I really enjoyed it despite its shabu-shabu-ness. A pity some people arrived and lit up, but otherwise it was a pleasant experience.

Seeking to make the most of our "street/fair food" frenzy at the La Qua near the Tokyo Dome, my wife and I determined to have some of the delicious looking "beavertails" (aka fried bread with stuff on) being sold from a mobile van in the middle of the open area. Oh my, am I glad we did! This stuff is like manna from heaven! You can put pretty much anything on top, or just slather with butter and go to town! Not overly oily, and deliciously crisp in the center, they are dangerously addictive. Probably a good thing we don't have one anywhere near us.

Beavertails is a Canadian franchise, so I'm not sure how it got over here, but I'm glad it did. Maybe we'll see more of them around town if they get popular. Highly recommended.